Thursday, March 22, 2012

Give Current TV co-founder (with Al Gore) Joel Hyatt credit for not sugar-coating why the San Francisco-based cable channel abandoned its original programming strategy in favor of liberal political news and commentary a la Keith Olbermann: “At the end of the day, our conclusion was, that didn’t work.”

Add: Widely hailed (if little watched) for the documentary and viewer involvement programming that was its start-up focus, Current has of late entered MSNBC’s niche in the flip-side-to-Fox News category. Hyatt tells MediaBistro:

And so our programming direction right now is very, very clear: We are all in as a political commentary and news analysis network…But we will continue to innovate ways in which our viewers and users can participate, can be involved, can engage with the content, can contribute content. That's always going to be part of who we are.